Animation Drawing of Gertie the Dinosaur

Gertie the Dinosaur 1914 Winsor McCay Studios

Gertie the Dinosaur was originally created to be used in McCay's vaudeville performances. McCay started performing "chalk talks" on vaudeville in 1906, as a sideline to his regular newspaper cartooning. In 1911, he began presenting animated films on stage, first an animation of Little Nemo in Slumberland, then How a Mosquito Operates. Plans for Gertie were announced in 1912.

Film title: Gertie the Dinosaur

Image title: Sold - Gertie the Dinosaur at Play

Year: 1914

Width of Image: 8.00 inches

Height of Image: 6.00 inches

Width of Art: 8.00 inches

Height of Art: 6.00 inches

Price: $5,000.00

Sold

Gertie the Dinosaur was produced before the introduction of later time-saving techniques such as cel animation. To create the film, McCay himself drew thousands of frames of Gertie on individual 6.5 x 8.5 inch sheets of rice paper. He hired neighbor and art student John A. Fitzsimmons to draw the backgrounds. Fitzsimmons carefully re-traced the rocks, lake and tree from a master drawing onto each sheet of rice paper.